ANSAmed – Italy
March 12, 2010 Friday 7:04 PM CET
TURKEY: AMBASSADOR, ITALY NOT ACKNOWLEDGING ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
ANKARA
(ANSAmed) Italy is not joining those countries that acknowledge the
massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917
as "genocide".
The announcement comes in a memo circulated today by the Italian
Ambassador in Ankara, correcting reports on a Turkish television
channel which had placed Italy on the list of countries that
officially considered it an act of genocide. The communiqué went on to
specify that what the TV station had said "did not correspond to the
truth" and it pointed out that Italy’s Parliament, in a resolution
passed on November 17 2000, committed the country’s government to
"exerting its influence to completely overcoming any friction between
peoples and minorities in the area in order to create the conditions
for the respecting of the territorial integrity of the two states
(Turkey and Armenia), for their peaceful coexistence and the
safeguarding of human rights as part of a more rapid integration of
Turkey into the European Union".
Turkish TV broadcast this denial immediately, thus closing the affair.